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Posts Tagged → party

Trying to score cheap political points seems attractive, because it looks cheap and low-cost. A lot of it has been going on lately, but it actually has a huge cost. It has a huge cost to everyone else as collateral damage victims, and in a just world it should have a boomerang cost on its progenitors.

Scoring cheap political points usually means ascribing blame or responsibility for something the object or person in actuality bears no responsibility for. In other words, it is cheap because it is wrong and unfair.

Over the past two years, attempt after attempt has been made by the mainstream media, and its one political party ally, to ascribe and pin onto Donald Trump responsibility for everything from bad breath to Muslim terrorism to dog bites to you-name-it, they have alleged it.

Most recently, cheap political points were attempted on Judge Kavanaugh, who was at first accused at the 11th hour of his nomination of having momentarily rough-housed as a teenager, 35 years ago, with a female classmate (Blasey Ford). From that one foggy accusation, foggy because Blasey Ford could not recall the date, the day, the time, or the place, and the people she called as witnesses all strongly disagreed with her, came a cascade of increasingly outlandish accusations. Suddenly on TV and news outlets everywhere, Kavanaugh was claimed by various activists and “news” personalities to have been a rapist, a serial rapist, and finally guilty of perjury.

None of this made any sense when squared up with the actual personal history of Judge Kavanaugh. No evidence was ever presented for any of it; it was all just hype and hysteria. It was just a cheap attempt to create a black cloud over Kavanaugh, over Donald Trump, because he nominated Kavanaugh, and over the GOP, because they controlled his future as a nominee. Now he is Justice Kavanaugh on the US Supreme Court, because none of the outlandish cheap political points added up to anything, and the American People didn’t buy the hype.

In that process, the Democrat Party leadership was almost universally revealed to be shameless whores, partisans willing to say and do anything to try to move the public opinion needle more into their favor. Even if it involved destroying the public’s faith in the carefully constructed political system that defines our unique nation.

Then there was the fake “attempted bombing” of a dozen leading Democrats and their financial supporters. Fake because none of the “bombs” were actually functional bombs. None exploded, and as far as we can tell from the information released, none of them could explode. The “bombs” were so outlandishly fake, and the whole effort was so outlandishly amateurish, and the facts were not in, and yet the Democrat Party again began trying to immediately blame Donald Trump, with some people actually saying that Trump ordered the bombs to be sent. Meanwhile, many Americans actually began blaming theDemocrat Party for once again ham-handedly trying to gin up false sympathy for their increasingly tarnished brand, to move the public opinion needle in their favor.

And now there is something truly horrendous, a massacre yesterday, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of eleven elderly synagogue members simply praying to God and harming no one. A deranged lunatic anti-Trump Democrat walked in, screamed “All Jews must die,” and began shooting people.

Within hours, some leftwing Jewish organizations and individuals went into overdrive, using the innocent victims to try to score cheap political points against Donald Trump, the GOP, law-abiding American gun owners, Christians, and just about everyone else they disagree with on some political point or another. Some actually accused Trump of having created an atmosphere and environment conducive and even productive for this sort of attack, which is beyond over-reach. It is simply the same old hysteria we saw with the Kavanaugh smear and the fake bombs, except now resting on the backs of murdered Jewish people.

Out of this latest attempt at cheap political points, the most egregious example is the public statement from the very, very mis-named “Pennsylvania Jewish Coalition.”

There is zero about this group that is a coalition, as coalitions are generally made up of various different parts of groups or philosophies. The PJC represents the farthest left view and political aspirations that can be found in the American Jewish community. More than anything, this is a group of hardcore Bolsheviks; liberal Jews at war with free speech, democracy, capitalism, the US Constitution, lawful private gun ownership. Pretty much everything good that America is or has been, the PJC denigrates.

So, as one might expect, the Pennsylvania Jewish Coalition statement on the Pittsburgh massacre tries to score cheap political points on gun owners and border security advocates, especially, and yet is so shrill and inflammatory that it crosses over into recklessness, because it is sure to paint all Jews with the same insane brush. Thereby inviting more pushback against all Jews.

Naturally, normal Americans are both horrified at the massacre and bristling with indignation that they had anything to do with it. By using the typical crybully tactic and attacking normal Americans and ascribing blame for the massacre to them and their favored politician, Donald Trump, groups like the PJC are alienating the very people they need to persuade. But, like the Democrat Party leaders, the PJC is willing to burn down their own broader community’s credibility in the pursuit of cheap political points.

Election Day, November 6th, cannot come soon enough. If God is just, it will be a day of reckoning and justice for the kooks that are intent on burning down America because they don’t control it.

It is time for normal Americans, the so-called swing voters, the Independents (and how I wish I could register as an Independent), to take note of who is really pushing America to the brink. To take note of who is really up-ending our otherwise calm and happy nation. To pay back in like political currency those who have refused to accept the legitimate results of November 2016, and who have sought to destroy America because they cannot control her.

I rarely advocate for voting straight party ticket, and I rarely do it myself. But this year, a big Republican win over the insane voices and destructive forces from the Democrat Left is necessary to demonstrate that there is a God, and that there is retribution for having used and abused the American People so badly.

Vote straight Republican, even if you never do it again in your life. Now is the time, this is the year.

By any measure, my beloved city and the home of my father’s family in an unbroken chain since 1745, is now a non-functional wreck. A shambles. A disaster.

Our combined city millage rate is an incredible, unbelievable, phenomenal record of 71 Mills! See the official Dauphin County millage rates below. Harrisburg City is at the bottom.

Those readers who do not understand what millage is, it is the local tax rate for public services like fire, water, police, sewers, and sometimes schools. Most Pennsylvania communities have a millage rate of about 6-10, total.

Millage rates are supposed to reflect the quality of public services that taxpayers receive. After all, we are paying these incredibly high tax rates for a reason.

But here in Harrisburg, we taxpayers have no such illusions or expectation of receiving much of anything in return for our hard-earned money. Most of our city taxes are squandered by unaccountable bureaucrats and politicized mayors who come and go, come and go, spending all the way. Our city council is completely non-functional, filled with bitter personality disputes and zero achievements for the actual people underwriting the bills.

And then there is the Harrisburg School District, a study in unabated and completely open incompetence and corruption. Our city school district has been run by the state, only to be set aside and allowed to fester and rot, for the whole public to see. And still nothing is done to fix it. The school children here, mostly black kids, suffer the worst, because for all their time spent inside four classroom walls, they actually get very little education.

And now the latest example of just how badly Harrisburg is run is revealed in a lawsuit by Michael Brenner, owner of the building where the Harrisburg City Public Works Department is housed. Brenner has leased the building to the city for many years, and he is owed $717,000.00 by the city in back rent, unpaid taxes, and damage to the building that the city cannot or will not fix.

For those readers who do not understand what a city Public Works Department is or does, it is the one place where taxpayers expect to see something happen, because it is all about the roads, streets, sidewalks, potholes, etc. No matter where you go in America, the city’s Public Works Department is the place where the can-do guys work, the guys who know how to fix things, weld things, bend metal, pour concrete, and operate machinery to get snow plowed and fallen trees out of the roads.

Except here in Harrisburg, it seems our city Public Works employees don’t do much of that kind of work on their own building. And it turns out the city won’t pay the owner the rent the city agreed to pay.

Folks, this is a failed government. This is a failed city. When the government cannot or will not pay its most basic bills, or properly run its most basic departments and school functions, then we have a failed government. Plain and simple.

And like almost every other American city with high taxes, poor services, failed schools, and bad government, Harrisburg shares the distinction of being overwhelmingly Democrat, black, and poor. And yet… black people run very few of the city’s functions! Those jobs are reserved for the oh-so-sophisticated White Liberals, who lord it over their Democrat plantation serfs like they are running one of their old Democrat plantations back in the 1850s Deep South.

This abject failure is the price of having just one political party in power, endlessly and forever. That one political party is the Democrat Party.

At some point, city residents will begin to ask the simple question: “What have I got to lose by voting for a different political party that has different ideas of how to run things?”

To my black city neighbors, all I can say is that the solution to this bad situation is fully in your hands. You are the majority of the voters here. If you want things to change for the better, and we know you do, then you can start voting differently. Vote for candidates who represent different values and behaviors than the same-old White Liberals who have led you down this proverbial garden path for how many decades….

For those like me who are bothered by the simplistic, almost child-like identity politics of partisan political party identification, there is always the third way out: Independent.

True to its name, being an Independent means that one is much less driven by one-dimensional partisan interests, and much more broadly politically driven, by more philosophical interests.

Oh please, don’t kid yourself that the Democrats and the Republicans today represent philosophical strands of thought on government involvement in the lives of the citizenry. That is a joke.

Both main political parties, Ds and Rs, are each practically wholly-owned subsidiaries of their respective special interest groups. Because I believe in economic freedom, among other things, I am more drawn to the Rs than the Ds, who have now pretty much openly embraced socialism.

Socialism is the opposite of economic freedom, and socialism requires tremendous inroads into personal freedom to achieve its artificial “income equality” outcome. The Ds have completely thrown in with the communists, the socialists, the chaotic ANTIFA, and the 1%-ers like George Soros who fund all the anarchic, violent, anti-America street melees. If you like your doctor, you will not be able to keep your doctor, as the previous ANTIFA president demonstrated, despite his lies to the contrary. There is nothing here with this group or amalgamation of groups for the average American family trying to get by comfortably and live a simple, happy life.

However, there are plenty of Rs who are D-lite. Call them RINOs, GOPe, whatever, they are part of an established, elite political class who have elevated themselves above the broad interests of the citizen taxpayer. Their interests are narrowly economic and even more narrowly financial. Big corporations, the Koch Brothers, US senator Mitch McConnell’s big and financially rewarding ties to the Chinese government, the various guises of the Chamber of Commerce, etc.; all seeking to funnel as much financial gain into as few big pockets as possible. At the cost of Americans’ freedom now and future liberty.

Like the Ds, this GOPe group also tries to manipulate national policy for personal gain, with open borders and no checks on the el-cheapo labor force that comes with a huge cultural and school tax price tag. Obviously the GOPe has little in common with the interest of The People, either, though more economic freedom can be found here than with the Ds. Nevertheless, the GOPe RINOs are not really committed to defending citizen freedom and liberty.

Thus the demand for the Independent identity. The problem with the Independent Party is that it is frozen out of many states, where there is a bi-partisan death grip on electoral process. If there is one thing both Ds and Rs can agree on, it is that they and they two alone must control, if only occasionally share, political power and outcomes for everyone else.

This is why there is so much collusion and bi-partisan deal making in places like Pennsylvania, where our closed Primary artificially limits voter choice. Being an Independent in most places, like Pennsylvania, means one cannot really vote in a meaningful way in the primary election, arguably when votes matter most.

If the Republican Party of the 1860s was the vehicle for the great Abolitionist movement, much of that great spirit is now gone. Obviously. Oh yes, we have the congressional Freedom Caucus, a refreshing group of patriots and individualists. But they are largely outnumbered by the corporatists within their own party.

And never mind that the Ds demand their minorities aka modern-day slaves remain and vote on the Democrat Plantation, just like they did in the old days. And that everyone else fall in line with their autocratic control schemes. Or else.

I do not identify as a Democrat and probably never will again (to do so would be like gleefully standing by the road screaming “Heil Hitler” in 1930s Germany as the latest Democrat Socialist Messiah drove by), so trying to figure them out is a waste of time.

So, I am now reaching and looking farther back in time for a political identity, back to more philosophical times, to when big ideas had relevance to everyday lives. And in that past I find the old British Whig Party actually captures my current philosophical views.

The Whigs of the 1700s-1800s believed in spreading political power and decision-making to the citizenry as broadly as possible.

The Whigs believed in Abolitionism, the movement to abolish slavery. Plenty of economic and financial gain at stake there, so it was a truly principled stand in the meanest sense.

The Whigs believed in a parliamentary monarchy, which was radical at the time. Though the Magna Carta had been written and signed by the British king so many centuries before, its notions of freedom, representative government, and due process for the average citizen only took a few centuries to refine and percolate up and out to the point where the monarch’s absolute grip on power was actually, truly challenged by erstwhile representatives of The People.

That slow progress also involved a couple civil wars that were spiced nicely with religious feuding. Lots of heads rolling in the streets, families burning at the stake…what the Chinese call “exciting times.”

So given they had witnessed the great evil and cruelty carried out in the name of official religious control and power, the Whigs were naturally against the establishment of all religious tests for citizens, and against an official, established state religion. On this score they eventually lost, as Anglicanism is now the official state religion of Britain.

Similarly, Scotland has the Church of Scotland as its official place of worship. Not that either of these churches are very Christian nor pro-Western today. The Whigs correctly viewed official religions as being against the interests of the People, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Church of England’s official anti-West, anti-freedom do-gooder political meddling.

In short, Britain’s Whigs were non-conformists who believed in a third way: diffuse political power, as opposed to centralized power. They promoted economic freedom and individual liberty for all, including for the lowest slave.

British history and people may appear rather blase and boring to today’s casual reader, but rest assured it was nothing of the sort. An overabundance of violent civil wars resulted in the seemingly placid society one enjoyably visits today.

As a result, the Whig party was transcendent for almost two centuries. With its enlightened philosophical views came maximum freedom and opportunity for the greatest number of Britons, ever. Many Whig views found their way into the American Constitution.

Given the anti-citizen Uni-Party political establishment here in America, the weakness of the Independent Party, and my own Constitutionalist views, I am mighty tempted to join the 1700s Whigs. At least they stand for something real and valuable.

And what does it say that in 2018 we must now reach back to the early 1700s Britain to reconnect with our greatest individual rights and needs in 21-st century America?

Yes, a good guy with a gun stopped the shooter, and he could have been stopped sooner.

But stopping that shooter (and the next one) would require taking the kinds of concrete, proactive steps necessary to actually protect the students from harm. It is as easy as having police stationed in the school, or armed guards (including armed volunteers), or arming the staff and teachers who want to be armed.

And these options are all too pragmatic, too simple, too real for liberal Democrats, who reject them all. They would rather use this latest blood in the streets to promote their nation-wide civilian disarmament schemes, because what they really want is political domination over every American citizen.

In fact, sacrificing a few school students on the false altar of gun control is one of those unfortunate but necessary “breaking a few eggs to make an omelette” things that liberal Democrats desire, to achieve their political goal.

The more blood, the more emotion, the more fear, the more crisis, the more they can take advantage of people’s emotions and ram through laws that will do nothing to solve the problem, but which will advance liberal Democrat goals of civilian disarmament.

When the ten-year Clinton gun ban sunsetted in 2004, liberal Democrats admitted openly that it had done nothing to lower crime. But they wanted it reinstituted, nonetheless. The high cost of disarming law-abiding Americans won’t do anything to make schools safer, either. So why demand this?

Liberal Democrats want absolute control over you and me, folks, and that is all. They do not want solutions. An armed citizenry is the ultimate block against the Democrat Party’s goal of full control of America; this is the “problem” they are really trying to solve.

If you doubt this, look at this phony, illegal “Russia collusion” thing: It is just “resistance” against the Trump administration by any means necessary – legal, illegal, unethical, immoral. Liberal Democrats reject results of elections they lose. They reject laws they don’t like or don’t write. They enable an unsustainable illegal immigration invasion and illegal sanctuary cities to recruit illegal aliens who they want to convert into loyal voters and artificial political dominion. They use the democratic process to achieve non-democratic results.

After the Parkland shooting, liberal Democrats had meetings, marches, protests. Lots of demands. Lots of brutal demonization of the NRA, of law-abiding gun owners, of gun manufacturers, even of the US Constitution. In all of that activity, they would not address how their liberal Obama-era PROMISE program had caught and released the violent criminal Nikolas Cruz half a dozen times, so that he could finally follow through on his public promises to commit mass murder in his own school.

I am sorry for the parents of the children hurt and killed in Santa Fe, Texas. I am sorry for their parents, and for their teachers and school administrators, and friends. I feel very badly for them, and if they are angry about this, they need only direct their focus on the liberal Democrats and their henchmen (teachers unions) who have blocked all natural, logical, and effective means to preventing these shootings from happening.

Liberal Democrats love political power and gun control more than they love school students. Remember that the next time you vote.

Across America establishment politicians in both parties are falling like leaves from a tree in the Fall.

Retirements forced by grassroots voter frustration with the ossified, petrified, failed and always self-serving “management” style of people who were elected to actually lead.

Leadership means taking risks and making sacrifices. Very few elected officials today do either of these, instead shape-shifting from public leader to private sultan.

Enter the digital age.

Digital information has exposed these elected sultans for the self-enriching failures they are, and informed more and more voters about just how bad our national situation is, how badly we citizens have been abandoned by the people we elected to represent us.

The political establishment is inflexible, playing by old rules that do not work well in this modern digital age. This establishment includes the legacy media, AKA the establishment media or mainstream media. Or, the “drive-by” media, as one radio talk show host accurately calls them.

The mainstream media is so badly ossified that it is now openly allied with one political party, even going so far as to openly act against the most basic interests of the American citizenry they are supposed to inform. Now, the mainstream media is lying constantly every day, simply trying to create political and cultural narratives that advance their agenda, rather than reporting facts. They also actively suppress facts that are contrary to their narratives.

The only way the will of The People can be gained and used for political gains is through misleading them\us.

But today, information now flies at the speed of light, to hand held phones and internet browsers all over the world. Information that is contrary to the establishment media’s false narratives is getting around both the party and media blockades.

If you are tired of politics and political battles being waged in both main political parties today, be glad we are not seeing it play out the way these differences have done over history: Bloody heads on pikes and grieving families echo throughout history, widespread destruction, famine.

Being “tired” of politics is a huge luxury we enjoy in a stable world and its biggest superpower, America. So don’t be a weenie, and don’t cop out. Stay in the battle, such as it is, and play your role as a free citizen. Be thankful you are not facing a line of bayonets, as in the past.

Every active citizen is needed and each one as a part-time activist makes a huge difference, and helps advance the cause of Liberty. All you need is your smart phone and about one hour a day to help advance your own interests more than any elected official can, or will.

In the 1930s, the German NAZI party identified “degenerate” art that was supposedly representative of “degenerate” culture, officially unfit for Germans.

Paintings, sculptures, drawings, pottery, books, poetry, you name it, if it had any artistic value, the NAZIs scrutinized it carefully. And if that art did not match the NAZI’s new standards, then it was forbiddden, burned, destroyed, or looted and hidden away, to be ransomed and sold off to future buyers outside of the ‘culturally supreme’ Deutchland.

Entire museum collections and privately owned collections throughout NAZI-occupied Europe were looted, damaged, and or destroyed, because the art did not comport with the new standard these Ultra Germans had created. Priceless artifacts were lost forever, at best melted down for their precious metal value.

If you want to see the long-term impacts of this intolerant approach to art, use www.duckduckgo.com to search the phrase “nazi looted art,” and marvel at the sad results. Real Western culture took a huge hit from the neanderthal NAZIs, and the ill effects are still felt today.

Fast forward six decades to ISIS, the puritanical Muslim movement that uses extreme violence and sadistic cruelty to achieve political domination. A lot like the NAZIs, come to think of it.

ISIS has a thing against most art and even historic artifacts, if they do not fit neatly into the Sharia law that ISIS followers believe in.

Entire churches looted of anything of immediate value, then burned down, by ISIS.

Entire museum collections either destroyed, or looted and re-sold on the international black market, by ISIS.

Fast forward just a few years to ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, etc., and now we have priceless American artifacts that belong to the public being outright destroyed by mobs from these groups.

Irreplaceable and beautiful bronze statues of long-dead generals and soldiers are being removed and destroyed either by street thugs enabled by big city mayors, or by the big city mayors themselves.

This is a war on history and art no different than the NAZIs or ISIS.

At the very best, this is simply the mistake of applying new understandings to old history.

Oh sure, the neanderthals claim that these statues are memorials to bad ideas, and sad times, and to some extent there may be some vague shred of truth in that. But to keep these cultural artifacts, these works of high art, is no endorsement of what they may have once captured long, long ago.

Rather, these statues are mute testimonials to our nation’s history, its struggles, and its triumphs. The fact that the Confederacy did not win, due to the intervention and huge sacrifice by hundreds of thousands of Caucasian men from the north, is the real story of these old monuments.

Today we have one American political party that is increasingly at open war with every basic value and idea that undergirds America, as it was founded. These public square symbols are caught up in that party’s war.

That political party has more and more officials doing cheap political stunts, like seizing old bronze statues in the public square, and declaring them “Cherem” (unfit, like ISIS does to the churches it burns), and culturally unfit, like the NAZIs did.

Frankly, there is zero difference between these mayors, and Virginia governor Terry McCauliffe, and the other totalitarian movements that preceded them, like the NAZIs, ISIS, and the Soviets (who tore down beautiful old Russian statues and replaced them with boring, utilitarian statues of Lenin and Stalin meant to project an intimidating political message).

Whether these mayors and governors act unilaterally and use publicly owned machines to take them down, or if they allow their allied street thugs from ANTIFA and BLM to tear them down, while the city police are ordered to make no arrests, it makes no difference.

In the end, these mayors and their violent street soldiers are no different than the worst people in history. But if they win, you can bet they will erect statues of themselves, glorifying their total transformation of America to…God knows what.

Now they are talking about destroying the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. No lie.

I say we make a stand like a stone wall to protect this historic American art, and stop this insanity, stop this assault on America, by these modern day NAZIs and ISIS thugs.

You know all this wailing, caterwauling, and gnashing of teeth about the political situation?

The “Russia did it” theme.

The “SHE WON” theme.

The street battles, the brutal assaults by anarchist ‘antifa’ and paid party hacks on MAGA and Trump supporters peacefully and legally assembling to voice their opinions, the unending, partisan mainstream media assault on the First Amendment and the truth….yeah all that.

You know what this is all about?

It is about the loss of power.

These are sore losers who watched ultimate control of government and citizen slip slowly through their fingers, and boy are they mad about it.

Throwing up a dustcloud of obfuscation is just an attempt to ‘fire all your bullets and see which one hits.”

Russia did it?

Did what?

Made Hillary Clinton publicly sick and privately untrustworthy?

Russia made Hillary’s campaign avoid key states they took for granted, but which ended up voting for her opponent, instead?

No one really believes this. Chanting it, screaming it, talking seriously about it on TV is just designed to cast a shadow over a political outsider who threatens the entire house of cards built by BOTH political parties over the past five decades.

“She Won”?

Really? Didn’t Bernie Sanders actually win the Democrat primary race, but because the Clintons had already paid off and scooped up every delegate from Boston to Beijing, it didn’t matter that Bernie would win a state primary.

He’d win a state primary, and yet Hillary’s delegates would increase more than Bernie’s.

Then it came to light that the DNC staff and leadership was working for Hillary. Actually giving her the answers to upcoming debate questions ahead of time. Because, as we learned from the spilled emails, those same leaders and staffers did not believe she could properly or persuasively answer the debate questions without having written answers in front of her.

That was cheating, cheating, and more cheating, so no, Hillary did not win, Bernie really won.

Either candidate would have tried to cement in place the vast government over-reach the Obama administration had engaged in since taking power in 2008. The examples of that over-reach are too numerous and too severe to repetitiously list here, and if you are at all inquisitive, then you can do a quick internet search and learn for yourself about all of the illegal legal shenanigans, the daily bypassing of court orders, the ignoring of the laws and our Constitution.

All in the pursuit of amassing power and control.

And that today is what is driving so many people crazy. They were so close, so very very close to having that power and control, and Trump took it away from them.

And until yesterday, US Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was one of those most aggrieved people, yelling and screaming and accusing and making all sorts of wild claims, easily gobbled up by the mainstream media.

Now it turns out, DWS is likely a criminal, illegally selling DNC data to fraudsters working on her staff!

Yup, those are today’s headlines in a few corners of the Internet where people are more interested in actual facts than in power and control.

And in those corners the sunlight is shining, and it looks awfully clear that DWS is going to jail alongside her two aides, one of whom was arrested yesterday while trying to flee to Pakistan, where he had just wired a lot of money.

Folks, this yelling and screaming is a giant sore loser attempt to cover up incredible amounts of corruption.

The lid is about to come off the worm can, and we are all about to look deep inside at the mass of seething slimy worms. And whatever your party affiliation or ideology, none of us are going to like what we see.

Even the fake protestors will take a breather, because what has been going on is both totally wrong, and it must end.

In the past two weeks, a new US president has begun taking control of the executive branch over which he presides, per the US Constitution, and the world has exploded in reaction.

No better proof exists that America has been hemmoraging wealth and accreting parasites than the universal response of the same parasites: We want our free lunch!

How on earth does an illegal alien deserve my Social Security money, which I will not qualify for until I am in my late 60s and which I have been paying for since age 14? How does an illegal alien begin their new life here in America by breaking the law? Damn, the old frontier mentality is alive and well here, and it is unsustainable. Schools, hospitals, police services, public utilities, the costs imposed on all US citizens by illegal aliens is in the hundreds of billions of dollars every year.

The now formal move to create safe spaces for illegal aliens (“sanctuary cities” and even sanctuary campuses) is simply one political party trying to artificially bolster its voter numbers so it can artificially take control of America and impose its radical un-American agenda on the unwilling inhabitants thereof.

Now that California and nearly all Democrats have declared their determination to brazenly disobey federal law, basically an admission of lawless and threatening behavior, the distinction is absolutely clear: The Democrat Party is officially the party of lawlessness.

Oddly, the 1960s protest mentality has now persuaded people that simply because they oppose something, they can break the law, even violently and destructively. This makes no sense to normal Americans, but it is what we are up against. We are facing pure lawlessness, supported by the meddlesome recently departed president. He remains a class-less street organizer til the last, desirous of an ungovernable country filled with citizens at each other’s throats. What a guy.

And what if the town of Sonora, California, (or some town in western Maryland, or Upstate New York) declared itself a sanctuary city for lawful gun owners, who simply want to own otherwise legal guns that the state of California has arbitrarily declared unacceptable? You just know the CA national guard and every California SWAT team would descend upon Sonora, kick the crap out of everyone, arrest the otherwise peaceful gun owners, prosecute them fully, make an example of them, and leave nothing but smoking ashes behind. Hypocrite Liberals tolerate no one breaking theirlaws.

Now that one political party has openly declared itself at war with the basic tenets of democracy and law, the choice is clear for every normal American out there. Stop supporting the Democrat Party until it returns to the Earth’s orbit.

I know a lot of Democrats. There’s a bunch I hunt with, and a lot of neighbors and friends. These are all normal people. None of these Democrats I know want violence and destruction, or street conflicts. They stand distinctly against that behavior. Nor do they want to win at the ballot box by cheating. So, their time to step up has arrived, and their choice is clear. They must stop supporting the Democrat Party. Only they can pressure the Democrat Party to return to acting like Americans, and stop acting like an attacking seditious force trying to use illegal alien invaders as mercenaries and human shields to help them wrest control of American government.

Erik Arneson is never going to win awards for public relations savvy, but he does deserve to hold on to the job of director of the Office of Open Records he was appointed to by outgoing governor Tom Corbett back in December, 2014.

Arneson and the PA senate Republicans sued Wolf, claiming that the job holds a six-year term and that’s it. It is not a political appointment to serve at the whim of whichever governor is in office at the time. To do so would place the office squarely in the middle of politics it is supposed to be above.

Showing up to his January lawsuit press event in a Green Bay Packers-marked ski cap and satin jacket, Arneson alienated every Steelers and Eagles fan around, not to mention us PSU Nittany Lions fanatics. Plus, he did not look real professional, either, dressed up like he was going to a November football game, and not into a high stakes legal battle.

Maybe his rumpled look and out-of-synch team clothing choice represent a kind of idiot-savant mentality, which I would find refreshing. You know, a guy who is so focused on doing his job so utterly professionally that he walks around with his zipper open, his hair touseled, his head involved in important things, not mundanities.

More likely is that Arneson has spent so long in the ultra-insulated world of the professional party functionary system (Republicans and Democrats alike have this alternate dimension), that he is unaware that his appearance in public matters to the public. He may not even care. Accountability in that party functionary world is non-existent, and professionalism is not always what taxpayers would or should expect from the people they pay.

But the fact is that Arneson was duly appointed to a six-year term, which itself strongly indicates an independent position above the whims of politics, such as incoming new governors wishing to make government in their image.

Nearly all of Pennsylvania’s commissions and boards involve six or even eight year terms; some are four years, but they tend to be the ones where the governor alone makes the selection. At least that is my sense of things, having been involved in the selection process for the PA Game Commission and the PA Fish & Boat Commission. Both of those commissions had eight-year terms until last year, when they were changed to six years, which is still sufficient time for a board member to ride out political changes that might corrupt their otherwise professional and detached judgment.

For those people complaining about Arneson’s politically partisan credentials, ahem, we did not hear your voice when the first occupant of the office was selected, Terri Mutchler.

Terri Mutchler is a very nice person whom I knew a bit when we were students at Penn State, way back in the 1980s. She was professional and diligent, way back then, and again during her tenure as the first director of the Office of Open Records. And in that new role she feuded just enough with then-Governor Rendell to lend credibility to her claim of being above partisanship.

But recently Mutchler has come forward and admitted that she was a tool, literally, for partisan politics in past jobs, even in one of her most sensitive jobs as a senior reporter and news editor. [those of us already long ago jaded by the mainstream media are unsurprised by her admission; we just wish current political activists posing as news reporters at NBC CBS ABC NPR NYT etc. would be as honest]

In other words, Mutchler was a nakedly partisan Democrat, perhaps like Arneson would be a partisan Republican.

But if you don’t like Arneson for this reason now, where were you for the same reason back then, when Mutchler was appointed? Critics of Arneson cannot have it both ways – happy to have Mutchler’s partisan role back then, but opposed to Arneson’s presumed partisan role now. That is inconsistent, and therefore undeserving of respect.

Inconsistency is the hobgoblin of good government,and if there are two words that define what Americans expect from their government, it is good government: Professional, a-political, non-partisan.

So, Arneson must stay on, despite his frumpy appearance, his poor taste in football teams, his deafness to Lion Country’s football preferences, and despite the nakedly partisan calls for him to step aside for a Wolf Administration selection.

But I will say this: His beard, that damned scraggly beard, it looks incredibly unprofessional and unkempt; if he keeps that for one more day, then he does deserve to be fired immediately. And tie your shoes, Erik, dammit.

Yesterday in southeast PA, far away from the communities where this issue is most important and the citizens might not be so welcoming, Governor Tom Wolf staked out his position on creating a new 5% “severance tax” on natural gas from the Marcellus shale feature.

Right now, natural gas is selling at historic low prices, especially here in Pennsylvania. The financial incentive to drill more or spend more money to get more gas is very low, and drill rigs have been disappearing from across the region for a year.

The Saudis began dumping oil months ago, in an effort to punish competing oil producers Iran and Russia, with the secondary effect of dropping gasoline prices so low that the natural gas industry got hit from that side, too.

So now is not only a bad time for the gas industry, it is also a time of greatly diminished returns on investment and on royalties received. Scalping 5% off the top of that is punishing to everyone, including gas consumers, who will see their rates increase proportionally.

Here’s the biggest problem with a severance tax: Pennsylvania already has a 3% impact fee on Marcellus gas, and a Corporate Net Income Tax of 9.99% (let’s call it ten percent, OK?). Most of the other gas and oil producing states have no such additional taxes; their severance taxes are the one and only tax their oil and gas producers pay, not the multiple high taxes and fees drillers in PA pay.

Pennsylvania government is therefore already reaping much higher revenue from the gas industry than other gas producing states. That means that the companies doing business here are already burdened much more than elsewhere.

So adding a severance tax now, at this economically bad time, without commensurately lowering other taxes, or the existing Impact Fee, makes no sense. Unless the people promoting this have an infantile view of how America and business work.

And that right there is the problem. Way too many advocates for tax-and-spend policies like an additional severance tax have a Marxist view of business; essentially, to them, business exists to pour money into liberal schemes.

And speaking of spending, who believes that spending more and more and more taxpayer dollars on public schools, public teachers unions, and public teachers’ pensions, actually equates with better education?

So many studies disprove that (see the Mercatus Center), but it is a liberal mantra that taxpayers must spend ever more of their money to support public unions that support political liberals. And both parents of students and taxpayers alike now correctly see that system for what it is – simple, legalized political graft to fund one political party.

Public schools are mostly a disaster, yet teacher’s unions and their political buddies continue to pound on the table for more and more money. Homeowners are essentially now renting their houses from the teacher’s unions, and proposed laws like Act 76 seek to fix that unfair situation by removing the vampire fangs from homeowners and letting the larger society pay for its expenditure.

Going door-to-door for political races year after year, property tax has been the number one issue I have encountered among elderly homeowners. So many of them can no longer afford to pay the taxes on their houses, that they must sell them and move, despite a lifetime of investing in them. This is patently un-American and unfair.

So Tom Wolf is moving in exactly the opposite direction we need on this subject, and instead of trying to fix the tax situation, he seeks to make it worse. To be fair, Wolf campaigned on raising taxes. He just needs to remember that he did not get elected by voters who want higher taxes, they wanted to fire former governor Tom Corbett.